December 29, 2017
The “owner” of a chunk of stone taken from Persepolis has gone to court in both Quebec and New York City asking judges to block the return to Iran of the bas relief whose ownership is contested.
The limestone bas-relief shows a guard holding a spear and is smaller than a sheet of writing paper. It is believed to have come from one of the staircases at Persepolis. It has sparked an international tug-of-war since it was seized from an art auction by police in New York in October.
The New York District Attorney’s Office was in court November 22, arguing that the piece, valued at $1.2 million, should be returned to Iran, from where it was “stolen” in 1936, according to a written motion seen by the Toronto Star.
Separately, in a Montreal court, lawyers for AXA Insurance Co. have asked a Quebec judge to rule that ownership of the sculpture was properly transferred from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to AXA, which then had every legal right to sell it to the British art dealer from whom the New York police confiscated it.
A request filed with the court states that Rupert Wace, the British art dealer, purchased it from AXA after the piece was recovered by Canadian police in 2014. It had been stolen several years earlier from the Montreal museum.
“Refusing to grant the Ö orders [blocking the return to Iran] would have the effect of allowing the relief to be sent to Iran without a proper determination of ownership,” says the Quebec court request.
Quebec Superior Court Judge Babak Barin, an Iranian-Canadian, issued an order November 21 that the artifact should not be repatriated to Iran before courts can rule on who is the legal owner.
Barin said the Quebec court could hear the case because the ownership claim over the sculpture can be traced back to the Montreal museum.
“Conversely, the only connecting factor to the state of New York, other than the fact that the initial offer-to-sell-the-relief letter to the museum was sent from that state, is the accidental and transitional presence of the relief at the European Fine Arts Fair in New York City in October of this year,” he said.
He also sent a copy of the ruling to the judge in the US case, in the hopes that the Canadian injunction would be respected until such time as ownership of the piece could be determined.
The 20-by-21-centimeter (7.9 inch-by-8.3 inch) stone was seized as part of an ongoing investigation into the illicit trade of antiquities in New York. The probe has already resulted in seizures and repatriation of art worth more than $150 million.
It is being led by assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdanos, a classical scholar who also led the effort to recover priceless pieces of art and cultural heritage stolen after the US invasion of Iraq.
It was Bogdanos’s office that alerted Iran to the seizure of this stone on October 27, according to documents filed in a New York court last month. Now Iran wants the bas-relief back.
Ebrahim Shaqaqi, an official with the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), a government agency, described it as “a treasured piece of a bas-relief that depicts an Achaemenid soldier, which had been stolen from Persepolis decades ago prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution,” according to the Tehran Times.
How the stone got where it is today—in the possession of the New York Supreme Court—is a colorful tale that spans decades.
It isn’t clear who took it from Iran in 1936, but the Quebec court file includes the typewritten invoice issued in 1951 when Paul Mallon, a New York-based Frenchman, sold the piece to Frederick Cleveland Morgan, president of the Art Association of Montreal, for the sum of $1,005.
It was then housed in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and regularly exhibited over a period of 60 years until September 3, 2011, when it was stolen, according to Daniele Archam-bault, a museum archivist, whose affidavit was submitted in support of the insurance company’s ownership claim.
In September 2012, AXA paid out 1.18 million Canadian dollars to the museum under the terms of its insurance policy. But the stone was recovered 16 months later, in January 2014, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Alberta and the Surete du Quebec (the provincial police in Quebec) tracked it to an apartment in Edmonton.
The condo owner, Simon Metke, told CBC News after the raid that he had bought the sculpture for $1,400 from a friend of a friend in Montreal, unaware that it was stolen property.
“I’m really glad that I was able to protect this thing and look after it, and it sort of feels like it may have come to me to be protected so that it didn’t get destroyed or lost,” Metke said.
Lawyers in Quebec claim that the bas-relief was legally imported to Canada in 1951 before that country signed UNESCO agreements dealing with the trade of cultural heritage artifacts.
Even if the sale was not legal, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts became the legal owner under Quebec’s Civil Code after being in possession of the stone for three years, the court filing argues.
It may take some time to arrange an initial court hearing in Montreal on the requested ownership ruling. A follow-up hearing in New York on the request to block the repatriation of the sculpture is scheduled for Dec. 18.